The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sport, Arts, and Culture, and the custodians of the South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs), has released a national call for jury members for the 20th Annual South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs20).
Industry professionals are invited to nominate themselves or nominate someone else who meets the required criteria and has the knowledge, expertise, and commitment to make a meaningful contribution to the SAFTAs.
The SAFTAs20 Jury will have the significant responsibility of upholding the integrity of the SAFTAs’ judging process and ensuring that judging is carried out in accordance with the highest standards of film and television awards.
The nominated individuals will also need to be actively involved in the judging process to ensure a credible outcome.
The SAFTAs jury process functions as follows:
- The jury application, verification, and project evaluation process will be managed by the NFVF team, where the NFVF’s appointed auditors will monitor the process from the evaluation of jury member applications to the resolutions on category nominees and winners.
- Once applications are submitted from the open call, the NFVF’s appointed auditors will evaluate all applications for compliance and will monitor the selection process of jury members.
- The list of selected jury members will remain confidential in accordance with the POPIA Act, where requests for the names of the jury members will not be entertained in order to comply with legislation and to protect the integrity of the process.
- Once selected jury members are appointed, they will be expected to declare their conflict of interest on projects they have been assigned to evaluate prior to commencing the jury evaluation process, in accordance with the NFVF’s Conflict of Interest Policy.
- Once selected jury members are appointed, they will be expected to declare their commitment to confidentiality and impartiality in the interests of protecting the integrity of the process.
- The SAFTAs have 104 categories, where 99 are evaluated by the SAFTAs jury and 5 discretionary award categories are evaluated by the SAFTAs Committee.
- The judging process will have 2 phases (nomination phase and selection of winners’ phase) where 99 categories will be deliberated on across 21 panels.
- The jury panels will be comprised in a manner where they are diverse in terms of age, gender, experience, ethnicity and industry skills.
- Jury panels should ideally consist of an odd number of judges, with a recommended minimum of 7 and a maximum of 17 members per panel.
- It is preferred that 70% of the skilled members of a particular jury are practitioners working within the category they are judging to ensure technical and intellectually informed decision-making.
- The two phases of judging are:
- Phase 1: Individual project jury evaluations in determining category nominees
- Phase 2: Jury deliberations on all category submissions and to determine category winners
The Evaluation Criteria which Jury Members are required to meet is as follows:
- Industry practitioners with a minimum of 10 years’ experience and specialised skills in the film, TV and audiovisual industries.
- Applicants are required to send their CV’s and nomination letters to info@saftasonline.co.za.
- All submissions/nominations must include a profile of the nominee, along with a copy of their CV.
- If an application is not a self-nomination, acknowledgement of the nomination must also be submitted.
- Previous SAFTAs winners are encouraged and welcome to apply.
- The deadline for applications is 31 August 2026, at 23:59.
- Both phases of the jury process will occur between September 2026 and January 2027.
- Jury members are expected to make themselves available throughout the process to ensure comprehensive deliberation on the submissions.
For any queries, please reach out to Stacey Takane at staceyl@nfvf.co.za.